T

he email had a dramatic tone to it. "Only you can save the world," it began. Yeah, right. Why do all the weirdos write to me? "Like attracts like?" a colleague suggested. As I read the letter, my eyebrows rose higher until they floated cartoon-like over my head. The writer was not being sarcastic, but serious.

A teacher who wanted only to be known as Man-sir had sent me links to several articles which said the biggest threat to world peace was the culture gap between West and East. "Experts say the best bet for bridging that potentially catastrophic gap is shared entertainment: movies, sport, and in particular, humor," he wrote.

But that's the problem. "Westerners consider Asians to be wildly unfunny. And several non-Western cultural groups, such as Muslims and Mainland Chinese, they consider humorless to a dangerous degree," Man-sir wrote. "We need to prove Asians can be funny."

Your columnist wrote back: "Why me? There are many famous comedians. I am but a worm." He replied instantly: "True. But most famous comedians are Westerners and they have a coarse style which does not work outside the West. You are not as funny as them but you are Asian, you serve an audience of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and so on, and you are totally inoffensive."

Intelligent, sensible people do not waste time on people who insult them. So I dropped what I was doing and phoned him at once. The world's most pressing problem was a drastic shortage of Islamic humor, he explained. "Locating and distributing this will defuse global tension by showing that Muslims can be funny, charming and self-deprecating." Thinking about it, I realized words like "funny" and "charming" aren't used a lot about Osama Bin Laden, the only Muslim most Westerners can name. Man-sir was right about something else, too: Asian comedians are as rare as braincells in the Jonas Brothers' fan club.

Time to consult an expert. I phoned Wang Daiyu, a devout Chinese Muslim (there are more Muslims in China than in Saudi Arabia). "Are Muslims funny?" I asked. He replied: "Asking that question triggers an automatic fatwa. How would you like to die?" I assumed he was joking, but you never know with him, so I quickly moved the conversation on. "Do you know any Islamic jokes?" He gasped: "Are you kidding me? Muslims INVENTED jokes." He pointed out that the famous Nasruddin jokes are 800 years old. And he gave me an example of a Muslim joke said to come from the 9th century.

This is it: A man who claimed to be God was brought before the Caliph (leader). The Caliph said to him: "Before you open your mouth, let me give you a warning. Last year, a man turned up claiming to be a prophet sent by the Almighty, and we put him to death." The man nodded. "You did the right thing. I didn't send him."

Not bad. Getting on to my email, I commissioned Wang and other readers to find Asian and/or Islamic humor that was not offensive but genuinely funny. Their discoveries will be posted in this space tomorrow. We have a mission. Being funny is a serious matter. Only we can save the world.